


i will be your accident (if you will be my ambulance)

by opheliahyde



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Depression, Dissociation, F/M, Post-Possession, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Recovery, Road Trips, Self-Harm, Sibling Incest, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, suicide ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-15 22:55:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8076094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opheliahyde/pseuds/opheliahyde
Summary: Post-S3: It’s been eight months, longer than Amaru had Kate, yet sometimes Scott thinks she still has her, still holding her under, waiting for her to drown.  In which Kate tries to recover in the wake of Amaru, and Scott tries to hold her together, the best he can.





	

**Author's Note:**

> title from tv on the radio's song _ambulance_
> 
> Many thanks to my partner-in-crime, [scorpiod](http://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiod/pseuds/scorpiod), for the hand-holding and the beta!

Scott holds her afterwards—not sure what else to do, reaching for her arms as she falls against him, trembling like she might just shake right out of her skin, and fisting his torn shirt, pulling it taut across his back as he wraps his arms around her. Richie hands her over to him, Seth watching at his side—one in the bright sunlight, the other wrapped up, covered to keep from burning—they give him back his sister before they take off after Brasa, leaving him with the aftermath as they fight her demons back to hell.  

Kisa stays behind, struck-still and staring, a silent guard to keep watch over them.

Her sobs are low moans and high-pitched whimpers running through him like hot blades, getting inside his chest as Scott runs his fingers through her hair, strokes the back of her neck as her knees buckle. He’s holding more of her weight than he’s used to, keeping his sister steady in the shade of the desert afternoon. Her tears spill out over the skin of his neck, her mouth open on his collarbone, pushing her face against him like if she could, she would disappear like this.

“I want to die,” she tells him, reaching for his knife in his holster, quicker than his own hands, but he grabs her wrist, holds her hand still around the hilt. “Just let me die, Scott—just end it, help me, won’t you? She’s gonna come back, I can feel it. _She’s gonna come back_.”

Scott pulls her grip free of the knife, grabs it and tosses it away from them, the blade glinting in the afternoon sun. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” he whispers, useless little lies that make his legs lose strength, both of them collapsing in the dirt, dust billowing up around them. “She can’t get to you anymore, you’re free, you’re free.”

“I’ll never be free,” she tells him, holding his gaze for a moment with red-rimmed eyes that are all hers, bright green and sharp, cheeks splotchy, Amaru’s makeup running down her face like misplaced warpaint. Then Kate curls herself up in his lap, sliding down to rest her head on his thigh, crying herself out, letting go and passing out as Scott slumps his back against a thin tree.

Kisa’s fingers are cool across his scalp, stroking over the back of his head as she comes to stand beside them. “I don’t know if I can do this,” he confesses, not looking up at her, not wanting to see the heavy judgement in her eyes.

But Kisa crouches down beside him, lowers herself to his level and meets his eyes. “You can,” she says. “You love her. You _must_.”

  
  


 

 

Seth has a one-way ticket to El Rey and he offers it up to Kate like amends, a peace offering, a sorry he can’t bring himself to say—Scott recognizes it for what it is, reparation for his own part he played without ever admitting guilt. Scott wants to tell her take it and be free, take it and rest, but there’s a fury in her eyes that is all his sister and none of Amaru, a flash of fire that ignites her up; for a moment, she feels alive, Kate brought back to life as she steps closer to Seth, shoulders back, moving into his space like something vicious and threatening.

She rears her head back and spits in his face, thick mucus clinging to Seth’s cheek as her saliva drips down his jaw. “I don’t want anything from you.” Her head turns and meets Richie’s gaze, her voice rough, but _hers_ , sharp and cutting like Kate. “From either of you. I never want to see a Gecko for as long as I live.”

She turns away then, turns back to Scott, pressing their hands together, interlocking their fingers as she leads him away, a strength in her shoulders that crumbles when he gets her into the car. Kate folding over against the door, legs pulled up to her chest, the tears beginning to fall as she tells him, “just drive.”

Scott takes her as far away as he can on a half a tank of gas.

  
  


 

 

Scott takes her north, past the Texas state line she’s never crossed, then further west, towards the Great Plains, towards the coast, further still towards Washington State.

( _I want to go somewhere cold_ , she whispered to him that first night, both of them tucked into the backseat, Kate a heavy weight on his chest, her heartbeat a gentle rhythm lulling him to sleep. _I don’t want to feel the heat anymore._ )  

They stop at a drugstore in Denver, and Kate picks up a couple of boxes of hair dye and some scissors, laying them out on the table once they get into their motel room. Scott doesn’t tell her they could take her to a salon, let someone who knows what they’re doing do it, doesn’t tell her about the briefcase in the trunk Richie had handed to him and he had accepted without remorse or false modesty, enough cash to set them up for a while. He lets her choose how she wants to do this, helps her when she hands him the scissors.

“To my shoulders,” she says, “maybe higher.”

In the end, she ends up with hair that brushing her collarbone in one straight cut, then Scott helps put the dye in her hair, making sure her head is covered, root to tip, holding his nose at the smell, sharp abrasive chemicals making it difficult to breathe.

Kate smokes as they wait, the pack of cigarettes appearing with a lighter from her pocket like a magic trick—his sister with newfound sticky fingers, pressing the filter to her lips as she lights the end. “I can’t stop shaking,” she tells him, tagging a drag and exhaling smoke. “This is the only thing that helps.”

He doesn’t say anything, just finds her an ashtray.

Kate takes a shower when it’s time to wash out the dye, stays in there for over an hour and Scott starts to wonder if he should break down the door, terrified of what he might find—but she comes out, with a cloud of steam, her hair half dried, no longer red but a mousy brown that seems familiar and not, a bit too muted to be his sister, but close enough.

Kate hands him his knife. “You should keep a better watch on that,” she says. It’s then that he notices the bandages around her arms.

 

 

 

 

Kate dresses in jeans and oversized sweaters, nothing stylish, just enough to cover her body, her face clean, her hair tied back in a ponytail. Kate eats too little, picking at what Scott puts in front of her, but then sometimes too much, leaving her huddled over the toilet, puking it back up. She sleeps the day away, Scott’s jacket under her head like a pillow in the car and is up most of the night, twisting and turning beside him, moaning and sobbing into her pillow, rolling over to fit herself against his body until she calms, her breathing regulating, then slowing.

( _She made me watch_ , she tells him one night, after two days of no sleep, dark shadows appearing under her eyes—Kate pale, gaunt, and hollowed out, staring at him in the low light gloom, _she made me feel each life she took under my hands, told me how much I liked it, told me she could feel it, like the anger running through my veins—do you know what it’s like to have the person you hate most tell you that you’re one and the same?_

Scott doesn’t want to tell her about Carlos and all the things he said still clanging around his head like old junk he can’t get rid of, doesn’t want to say his name and make her hear it, but it’s like she knows, hands cupping his face, thumbs stroking his cheeks. _It’s okay_ , she says, climbing over him in bed, _I don’t hate you anymore. I’m all out of hate. Just like everything else._

She laughs then, snuffing it out against his mouth, making Scott feel her jagged edges bubble up from her throat and land in his gut, twisting sharp pains working through him as her kiss starts to taste salty and too wet.)

Scott doesn’t leave her alone anymore, too many scars marring her arms and her thighs, memories of the night he spent in a Los Angeles ER waiting room because they didn’t believe he was her brother as they pumped her stomach, hating that he didn’t know where she got the pills, how she managed to sneak that around his back just like the cigarettes, just like the booze sometimes.

(“It’s in my blood”, she jokes, downing a sip of whiskey before Scott takes it from her and smashes the bottle in the bathroom sink.)

They spend three days in the city until the hospital is forced to discharge her, Kate refusing further treatment, and Scott wants to make her take it back, tell her they have enough money, it might be good for you, edging off the tip of his tongue—Kate quiets him with a look.

“They’ll lock me up for good if I tell him I’m sad because I spent the better part of last year with the Queen of Hell riding around inside my body, Scott.”

She’s right, he knows she’s right, but he doesn’t know how to prevent the next close call, the next near miss.

(Kate calls Kisa once a week, locking herself in the bathroom for hours with the shower running so Scott can’t hear—she seems better after, lighter, like a strange sort of therapy session. It never lasts long, but it helps.

Kisa calls him when Kate is sleeping, tells him _you’re doing all you can, it’s going to take some time, just be patient_ ; he doesn’t ask her how she knows, just tries to take it as a comfort, words of wisdom from someone with experience.)

It’s been eight months, longer than Amaru had Kate, yet sometimes Scott thinks she still has her, still holding her under, waiting for her to drown.

 

 

 

 

“Why don’t you just turn me?” Kate asks, sitting on the hood of their car as Scott wipes his mouth, licking the corners of his mouth for excess blood; it’s always been easy hunting in cities, trying to still live cleanly, trying to eat sinners instead of civilians—means looking a little harder, prowling the streets of Portland, looking for someone in the act.

(He takes her with him now, when he feeds, when he hunts. Better than to leave her alone in a motel room. Kate doesn’t look at him with disgust anymore, just watches with vague interest whenever he tears into someone’s throat, listens to him confess what he heard and saw and felt of the person’s life; Kate doesn’t pray anymore, but she pets his hair and listens—they both take their turns listening, now; _sorry_ , she says, once, kissing his forehead, _sorry I ever told you needed to ask God for forgiveness_ )

She slides off and stands in front of him, still smaller than him, his big sister with her chin lifted, meeting his eyes. “That way we both can be killers, that way you don’t have to watch me all the time.”

“You don’t want that,” he says, trying to brush past her but she stops him with her hands on his chest, fingers curling in his shirt. “You never wanted that.”

“Well, I don’t want to live anymore, but you won’t let me die, so what’s the difference, Scott?”

He shudders, feeling sick, like he might just puke all the blood back up onto the pavement at her feet, but she lets him go, moving around the car and sliding into the passenger’s seat, watching him as he takes a few moments to right himself from the blow, inhaling the cool night air and closing his eyes.

  
  


 

 

Kate wakes up one night in Seattle, in another motel room they’ve spent a week in—easier to stop and rest for weeks, sometimes months at a time, let Kate get her bearings after an episode.

(another slip up with pills, another time trying to walk out into traffic, Scott always pulling her back and shaking her, asking her, w _hat the fuck do you think you’re doing?_ while she looks at him, dazed and lost, like she hadn’t been with him in that moment, like she’d been back there with Amaru—

 _I used to try, all the time,_ she tells Scott as he bandages her knees, scraped up from the gravel when they fell together as he pulled her back from the road, _whenever she messed up and let me have control, I tried to stop it—now I can’t stop what’s in my head, I wish you’d stop saving me_ ;

he kisses her temple when she’s all patched up, her scraped knee over the bandage, glancing up and holding her gaze, holding her in the moment, _you never gave up on me, so why would I give up on you?)_

She wakes up and runs into the bathroom before he can grab her, locking the door behind her, but he’s gotten good at picking locks, careful not to leave a trail by breaking the knob and sticking them with damages, figuring out how each door works, until he’s inside with her, Kate’s naked back greeting him, the shower on full blast, steaming up the room, the scent of blood expanding with the humidity. He touches her with careful fingers, careful not to spook her, set her off running. She snaps around and all he can see is pale skin and red, streaming down her arms, smeared over her face in streaked the shape of her fingers, his knife on the floor.

“Am I real? Am I here?” she asks, knees trembling as her tears cut through the blood on her cheeks. “Can you see me, Scott? Can you see me?”

Scott reaches for her shoulders, grabbing her with gentle hands, holding her close enough that they share a breath, Kate’s eyes clearing, latching onto his. “Yeah, I can see you, you’re right here with me, Kate, you’re real.”

It’s almost too much, watching her shatter after, crumble into hysterical sobbing that leaves her breathless and gasping, whimpering too harsh for his ears, feral and guttural as she collapses on him, staining his shirt with her blood, burying her face against his throat. She is easy to move afterwards, falling limp, pliable as he moves her into the shower stall, cooling the water down as he follows her into the spray, washing the blood from them both. Scott wraps her in a towel after, pressing gauze to the cuts she made down her arms, taping them up the best he could to staunch the bleeding, dressing her to take her to the ER for stitches.

They keep her another three days, 72-hours is the max, just three days for Scott to breathe easy, knowing she can’t hurt herself once she’s inside, but she always comes out, always says _no_ , when they ask her if she wants further treatment.

“I’ve spent enough time in psychiatric wards to last a lifetime,” she tells him, when Scott looks at her as she settles in the passenger’s seat, getting used to seeing his sister with white gauze around her wrists like a new fad accessory.

 

 

 

 

Scott gets them to Alaska by crossing another border, then another, into Canada and out of Canada, easier than Mexico, both of them with their original passports, both of them technically eighteen now. Scott gets Kate as north as he can get her and heads west.

( _I want to be by the ocean_ , she tells him, helping him navigate with a map spread across her lap, her fingers tracing lines, paths they could take. _I’m sick of land_.)  

Kate picks a port town called Valdez, in the Prince William Sound to settle down in—something about the ocean in front of her and the mountains behind her making her feel safe, loosening something in her body as Scott watches her stand on the edge of a dock as the sun sets. Scott tries to buy them a house with part of the money Richie gave them, but Kate tells him no.

“We’ll have to leave in a few years anyway,” she says, soft and careful, like she was trying to keep something under her tongue, keep quiet about how much it’d hurt to leave. “People will start to notice when you don’t age.”

A _sorry_ gets lodged in his throat, but he can’t say it out loud, the taste of it bitter, spilling sour across his tongue— _I can’t help it and neither can you_ ; it’s not worth it to say aloud, both of them at a stalemate, both of them needing and needing to be needed.

After a few weeks of searching, Scott finds them an apartment Kate likes, with enough views of the ocean, perched up on the third floor—there’s only one bedroom, but Kate hasn’t slept without him in months, so he hadn’t thought she’d mind sharing.

“We can tell them we’re newlyweds,” she says, half-joking, half-serious winding her arm through his. “We ran away from Texas because my daddy didn’t approve.”

Scott wants to laugh, but something heavy lodges in his throat that he can’t swallow down, and he can’t make himself stop shaking. But he lets her spin her story with a smile, holding Scott’s hands as the landlord gave them the key and they signed the paperwork, cash exchanging hands--lets her become someone else, if that’ll help her adjust, help her breathe easy. He buys them a couple of bands to make it seem real, buys Kate a small pretty diamond to sell it—remembering their mother’s engagement ring, the time when she showed it to him with a smile playing at the corners of her mouth, told him, _one day this will be yours to give to the girl you want to make your wife_ ; they buried her with that ring. Kate’s ring is smaller than their mother, but sparkles just the same when the light hits it.

“It’s a better story,” she says, sliding under the covers after they’ve moved in—new sheets, new bed, new clothes, new everything but their names and their bodies, old memories clinging to them like dust, old scars they can’t erase—some things they got to hold onto, even though they’d rather let go. “Don’t you think? Romantic, simple, familiar.”

“We didn’t have to lie,” Scott says, letting her curl against him, burrowing into her heat, running his fingers along the small, white scars along her arm.

Kate kisses his jaw, open-mouth and wet, running along the slope of it. “We’re always lying anyway, at least this is a good lie.”

  
  


 

 

Kate get a job as an assistant at the public library after a few months of volunteering and lying that she graduated high school, while Scott works some nights as the oil refinery. Some days, Kate still doesn’t get out of bed, sleeping or just laying there until the sun goes down and long after it. Some days are better, some days she eats the breakfast Scott puts in front of her and she showers, putting on real clothes and not pajamas, smiles sometimes, sleeps without nightmares sometimes. He keeps count of the good days, waiting for the day they outnumber the bad.

Kisa checks in on them once after they’ve settled, shivering as she sits at their small kitchen table, hands around a mug of hot coffee. Scott leaves to let them talk, takes a walk to the docks and sits with his legs dangling off the edge over the black water, slick like the oil that’s become embedded under his nails. Kisa leaves him a few heat lamps, which makes Kate laugh and thank her, kissing her cheek as she disappears through their front door.

Some nights Kate reads, studying while a cigarette burns in her hand and her coffee goes cold. “The least I can do is get my GED,” she says, well past nineteen now. “I didn’t think this would ever be my life.”

“Me either,” he says, picking up one of the books she brought home from the library, studying along with her, the feeling tight over his skin—a memory of when they were kids and their mother was their teacher flooding his senses, making his vision blur, just two kids at the kitchen table doing their school work.

Some nights Kate just wants to listen to him play his guitar in the dark, laying on her back stretched out across their bed, head hanging off the edge like the blood flow to her skull does something, like it dulls the memories still embedded there.

“I don’t want to die all the time,” she says to him, one day after a shower, still dripping wet, wrapped in a towel. “Can you believe that scares me more than anything?” She hiccups, then lets out a sob, shiver when Scott gets to her, lets her soak his shirt as she holds on, crying it out until she stills.

Neither of them work that day. Scott takes her to a movie and lets her cling to his hand in the dark.

  
  


 

 

Kate’s twentieth birthday rounds the corner with a quiet gasp, Kate blinking awake one day beside him as he whispers, “happy birthday” to her, combing through the ends of her hair—longer now, the dye melting and fading into something close to what it was, shiny chestnut strands flowing over her shoulder.

She tilts her head and kisses the words from his mouth, soft press of her lips against his—not unfamiliar, Kate kissing him here and there throughout the years, he’s grown used to the feeling, his sister kissing his mouth—until she pushes harder, rolling him on his back as she climbs on top of him, heavier now than before, a new weight to her around her stomach and her hips, holding him down.

“You know, after everything, I’m still a virgin,” she says against his lips, laughing, sudden and quick—he wants to laugh too, even in this, they weren’t the same; his virginity long gone before Kate ever touched him. “It’s kind of a sick joke. All that talk of purity and not having sex, yet I still feel unclean—Amaru was her own sort of violation.”

“Kate,” he starts, but she quiets him with her fingers, her lips.

“It’s okay,” she says; for a moment, he believes her, lets it be okay when she pulls off her t-shirt and puts his hands on her waist, lets himself grip her there as she kisses him, her fingers under the covers, working his pajama bottoms down. “It’s okay,” she repeats, mouth on his ear. “Everyone thinks we’re married anyway. And I want to feel this on my own terms. Can we? Can you do that? It’s all I want.”

Scott figures it was inevitable, them heading this way, been heading this way for a while now, Kate reaching for him in the dark and him reaching back, clinging just as hard, pressing into her kisses when she pulled away, want coiled up in his gut like a snake, ready to strike—he hadn’t slowed down enough to realize it until now, half-blindsided with Kate on top of him, Kate sliding onto him with a soft gasp, holding his hands the mattress, their palms pressed together as she starts to move, rolling and rocking her hips as she hovers over him, leans their heads together as he whispers to her, _it’s okay, you’re okay_ , squeezing her hands back until she comes with a shudder, setting him off inside her.

Kate lays on top of him as it works through her, releasing his hands as she breathes out against his throat, arching up as he runs his fingertips over the curve of her spine, her heart pounding against his chest, making him remember when it felt like to feel his beat.

“Thank you,” she says, sliding off of him and curling against his side, leg wound around his. “Thank you,” she repeats, kissing his cheek and tracing the gold band around his finger.

Scott couldn’t tell what she was thanking him for, never asks, just lets her fall back asleep against him.

  


 

 

Kate blows out her candles wearing Scott’s t-shirt and some thick woolen socks at five in the evening, the sun already long gone down. She saves her presents for later, the few small gifts Scott got her, a package resting next to them with Kisa’s return address, and cuts into her cake. Scott plops a scoop of ice cream on her plate and one on his. She looks up at him, and grins, purple frosting on her chin.

“I don’t believe in wishes,” she says, swallowing her cake down. “But I made a wish tonight.”

“For what?” he asked, cocking his head at her, feeling his mouth curl at the corners.

Kate shakes her head. “It doesn’t work like that,” she says. “You know it won’t come true if you tell.”

Scott lets her keep this one secret, just to herself, and doesn’t ask again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> This piece has been bubbling up inside of me for a few weeks now, then exploded out due to the recent release of the preview clip for episode 3x04 _Fanglorious_. All depictions of Kate's trauma and mental illness come either from personal experience, or extensive research, but please tell me if you feel I messed anything up or handled something insensitively! Kudos and comments are _very_ much appreciated. 
> 
> come says hi to me on [tumblr](http://richiesseth.tumblr.com)!


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